This debut novel became a bestseller in France and won eighteen literary prizes.
It takes us somewhere few would willingly go: a ward where, for five long years between 1914 and 1919, severely facially wounded soldiers endure a devastating convalescence—disfigured beyond recognition, no longer fit to be seen by anyone, family included.
Together they must learn to meet people's eyes, to love, to imagine a future. And they do, because their bond—forged through shared suffering and solidarity—teaches them what truly matters in life.
It is a world entirely new to most readers, one that raises hard questions about fragility and pain, and what it means to become fully human.
Mariangela Bertolini, 2008